A few subtle changes to the stylesheet; out goes the old date bar, replaced by something of a Sticky Date Note on the right. The sidebar is now the same colour as the background body, and all the colours on the page have had been toned down. Less padding round the edges removes the "looking down a telescope" impression that some of you reported. Everything should now be appearing in various shades of yellow, purple and black, apart from the links. Comments? .

While I'm dealing with correspondence in, almost two people have asked about the pictures on the left. They are a playful tribute to Latvian band Brainstorm, who have given the title; and to Nick Bantock's best-known creation Griffin & Sabine which inspired the juxtaposition of photographs.

From the top: a picture of the Matterhorn in July; Brainstorm; the Sonora at winter sunset; the archetypal summer activity; a griffin; sometime co-student and occasional reader Sabine C.

The preantepenultimate regular DARIA sees the return of Aunt Amy, a joke that still goes woosh! over my cow orker's head. Shame. She'd really enjoy this show, I figure. Anyway, D is stuck in the middle of her mother's argument with sister Rita over *their* mother's favours; and Stacey and Tiffany wear (shock!) the same dress; and Daria gives Tom the cold shoulder; and Jane hardly says anything all episode; and D and Quinn do a bit more sisterly bonding; and this is an episode that doesn't actually *go* anywhere but tells us a lot about how the characters have matured. Except for Sandi. Sandi will never mature - indeed, she seems to have become even more infantile since suffering her broken leg, or whatever.

Back to the parents' neck of the wood, in order to get some curtains. The cheap 'n' cheesy shop that they suggest first is full of crap. I don't want white curtains, I don't want flowers, I don't want tacky yellow or anything too close a match to my walls (a similar colour to the pale purple page background right now.) Out of that store before I begin to succumb to the extreme levels of chintz and tack.

Thence to the Top People's Store, more for ideas than anything else. We spot some decent enough shades, but they're oh so expensive. I really draw the line at paying as much for the curtains than for the paint that covered about half my walls. Thankfully, the second-line curtain store has the same design in a similar shade, for half the price. Excellent. Top notch curtains at a sane price. I'm sold.

BBC4's Time Shift looks back at the Grunwick strike. This was the zenith of the trades union movement, and occupied the headlines for something like three months in the summer of 1977. A quarter of a century on, though, it's been almost forgotten.

Grunwick was a film processing centre in north London. The root cause of the strike was the hot summer of 76, and the management disciplining a worker for opening a door to get in some air. The other staff at Grunwick joined a union, but the centre refused to recognise them or talk to them, resulting in a strike. When the rest of the trade union movement heard about this, they began to make life nasty. Mass pickets of the plant to stop strikebreakers from being bussed in. Huge violence as police and protesters clashed. Postal workers refuse to handle mail for the plant to stop it from working. Much ill-feeling on all sides. Headline after headline.

The strikers had a massive show of support in a 500,000-strong demonstration, but then the strike leaders effectively caved in. Militant miners' leader Arthur Scargill had been a central figure in the Grunwick action, and he claims interference from the TUC and (Old) Labour government, reporting claims that this would be the death of trade unionism as it was known in the late 70s. Utter poppycock, of course said Scargill on the programme, but the interferers were correct in their analysis.

In this day and age, workers are entitled to join a trade union (guaranteed under European Human Rights); and if a majority joins one union, the employer must "recognise" (negotiate with) that union. But secondary action, such as the post stoppages, is illegal, and it wouldn't be possible for the likes of Scargill to jump into another unions' dispute.

One-and-a-half more jumping off points: Brendan of Brennan Vic has taken up his blog again, and has started a literate blog as well. Sidebar as Viewaskew.

A Harvard project produces eleven rules of email. Some of them are bunk. So...

Those Eleven Commandments Of Email In Full:

1. Use email only when it's the most efficient channel for your need.
2. Do not print your email without good cause.
3. Send nothing over email that must be error-free.
4. Never forward chain email.
5. Never send email when you're furious or exhausted.
6. Don't pass on rumour or innuendo about real people.
7. Nor should you do so about companies you work for or may work for one day.
8. Your email is hackable and retrievable, and it can be used against you.
9. Never put anything in an email that you wouldn't be willing to broadcast to the world.
10. Practice good email etiquette.
11. Don't lie.

In short...

Never send, forward or reply-and-include anything over email that you would not want attributed to you by name on the front page of the newspaper.

That Friday Five In Full:

How many pairs of shoes do you own? Four formal-ish pairs for work, one pair of cloth trainers, one pair of blue Doccers, and one pair of deck pumps, mainly for gardening and in place of slippers.

What type of shoe do you prefer? Boots are good. Formal shoes, especially with no soles, are bad.

Describe your favourite pair of shoes. Why are they your favorite? That would be the docs. Not only because they fit like a glove, but also because they've been round the world with me for some years now. And they don't leak. Could use a new sole, but still as tough as - er - old boots.

What's the most you've spent on one pair of shoes? Probably GBP 45 on said doccers.

A busy day for channel-watchers. EMAP has pulled off a minor coup, by getting its The*Hits channel onto the New DTTV Service. But then MTV Networks responded by getting carriage for its own The Music Factory. Both will target the teeny-bopper end of the market.

FTV will showcase some of the best productions from the Flextech stable, probably including some of Challenge ?'s original productions. "Do you want to stick with the monkey? Defect: now."

Freeview launches October 30.

This week's The Thurthday Thearcth. (Try saying it like Sylvester The Cat from the WB cartoons...)

• Did Daniel Bedingfield write the hit single "Gotta Get Through This" in his bedroom in his underwear?
• Carol Vorderman in green trousers
• Turness
• The US band Nickleback
• Coloured Channel Four sign and clock
• Eddie Mair
• Norwegian postal stamps football
• Finland euro 1 cent coin
• "Peter Snow" "mad scientist"

Very long and tiring day. Days Go By gets a review. Callers are still pillocks. Weaver could really use a break.

Last night's ANNA IN WONDERLAND set me thinking. It was all about the Furries, a group that dresses up in lifesize furry costumes, broadly like sports mascots. Unlike Wolfie and Ollie and H'Angus, the furries are not being paid, or doing it for charity, or after losing a bet. They're doing it for the fun and companionship. It turned out that most of them were gay, and almost all went in for lots of sex.

Why might that be so? One can - quite literally - be someone else inside a furry costume. No longer are you Dave the geek from accounts, but you are a tiger, or a raccoon, or a fuzzy lumpkin. That allows one to separate actions as a furry from actions as a human. It's a form of repressing behaviour from one part of life, and allowing it to come out in a somewhat distorted way elsewhere.

Herasey, the group put together by the original POPSTARS programme back in early 2001, finally split today. After shifting half a million copies of their first single in a week, and 1.2 million in four months, the only way was down. Pyre And Simple sold another 134,000 copies by year's end, and that was very nearly the total sale of their other three singles. The group had been beset with internal strife, lost one member in February, and appointed their dancer - but not until after making 12 hours of ITV shows about the "open auditions" for said replacement. Those shows aired on ITV2 to an audience measured in dozens.

Popstars losers, formerly known as Liberty but now known as The Flopstars, are still signed. Will Young, winner of POP IDLE, seems to be past his croon-by date already, while sad loser Gagagagagagagagagareth Gates is still pop's top moppet. The real talent on both shows was Darius Danesh, who looks set for a decent career.

The Poptarts' album is now £1.99 in the HMV sale.

So, that's the exam done and dusted. Done, killed, history, passed, finito. Back into work, find that the document manglement system has run out of disk space, and the setup is less simple than we hoped. There are ways out of this, there always are, they involve spending money and probably taking time out of my schedule. But it's enough to cast a long pall over my achievement. Grr.

Those Jacko documentaries in full. Gets abused as a kid, is famous at 10, looks ok, then gets a nose job. Looks ok still, then gets another one then gets paler. Music starts to get crap, looks like a tit in Bad, makes songs about racism despite trying to look like a white Diana Ross. Ends up looking disgusting.

(5) concentrated on the freak's fizzog, pointing out that his mania for plastic surgery is probably an addiction, and he kinda lost it in the aftermath of the Jordy Chandler squabble.

Quote of the shows: He started out as an attractive black man, and finished up an ugly white woman. Choice had that within two minutes of the start; (5) waited till a minute from the end.

Guestwatch: (5) had the official biographer, the bloke who directed Thriller and Black Or White, and brother Jermaine. Choice had the bloke who won a million dollars' worth of Jacko tat by court order, the woman who lives in the same house as the freak, and the manager of the hotel where he stays.
Both had the bloke who signed the Jacksons to his local label before selling them on to Motown, but only Choice explained this.
Celeb guests: Choice had a walk on part from well-known jungle dweller and Exeter fan Uri "don't call me Uri" Geller; (5) had some stock footage of Egyptian grocer Mohammed Fayed.

It's just over ten years since the Daily Mirror ran an extreme close up of the pap star's face, exposing all the deformities. Then, they were threatened with legal action and told it was all the light. Now, it's all over the national television. Neither doc picked up on this piece of prescience.

Monday at 8 means only one thing: Britain's toughest quiz, UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE, with Jeremy "Thumper" Paxman. This week, Selwyn Cambridge is taking on Merton Oxford in a first round match.

Last on the Merton team is Hinesh Rajani, from Harlow, reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

And I'm thinking, didn't he move amongst us right here on the So-Called list about five years ago? Wasn't he the sensible chap from Harlow, as opposed to the so dim he'd flunk the audition for MILLIONAIRE chap from Harlow who was around at the same time.

These ex-listies get everywhere. [Update Feb 2003: No it isn't, it's that listie's brother. Still, another Famous Listie Sibling...]